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Jennifer Fraser

(she/her/hers)

  • Professor of Ethnomusicology and Anthropology

Areas of Study

Education

  • BA, University of Sydney, 1996
  • MA in ethnomusicology, Brown University, 1998
  • PhD in musicology, University of Illinois, 2007

Biography

Jennifer Fraser is a teacher-scholar, a locution that carries great significance for the way she thinks about teaching, scholarship, and the synergies between them. At 91直播, she has taught a wide range of courses, including academic classes, performance, and those that are hybrid. Wherever possible, she centers experiential learning, whether that includes using archival materials, doing ethnography, or mounting an instrument exhibit. See, for example, the website she built with students: .

Her ethnographic research has historically focused on the music of the Minangkabau people in West Sumatra, Indonesia, in relation to issues of ethnicity, gender, Islam, and natural disasters. In recent years, however, her projects have taken her in radically different directions and involve the digital humanities, public ethnomusicology, community engagement, and collaborative scholarship. See, for example, the community music program .

Her latest project is a digital humanities site, . The site is an interactive, interpretative, multimedia digital ethnography and archive that documents and celebrates saluang, a vocal genre from the highlands of West Sumatra, Indonesia.

Spring 2026

Public Humanities Learning Portfolio 鈥 LPRT 055

Introduction to Ethnomusicology 鈥 MUSY 100

Musical Thought: Analysis of World Music 鈥 MUSY 304

Musical Studies Honors II 鈥 CMUS 401

Javanese Gamelan 鈥 APST 748

Fall 2026

Music as Social Life 鈥 MUSY 103

Decolonizing Ethnomusicology 鈥 MUSY 206

Javanese Gamelan 鈥 APST 748

  • National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Stipend 2020 
  • Research Status, 91直播 College, AY2020鈥21
  • Outstanding Community-based Learning Practitioner Award, Bonner Center for Service and Learning, 91直播 College, 2018. 
  • Research Status, 91直播 College, AY2010鈥11.
  • Teaching Excellence Award 2009鈥10. 91直播 College. 
  • International Dissertation Research Fellowship, Social Science Research Council (SSRC). 2003鈥2004.

  • with Gabriela Linares (OC December 20), 鈥淩eimagining the Representation of Ethnographic Knowledge: The Philosophy and Methodology of a Digital Humanities Project鈥 Open Access Musicology. Accepted for publication in Vol 2, expected 2022. 
  • with Saiful Hadi, Gabriela Linares, Megan Mitchell, et. al. 2021. Song in the Sumatran Highlands. . 
  • with Saiful Hadi. 鈥淪inging 鈥楴aked鈥 Verses: Interactive Intimacies and Islamic Moralities in Saluang Performances in West Sumatra.鈥 Sounding Out the State of Indonesian Music, Edited by Christopher J. Miller and Andy McGraw. Expected 2022. 
  • with Karla Hubbard. 2021. 鈥淣atural鈥 Disasters, Cultural Framings, and Resilience in Indonesia: Transdisciplinary Engagements in an Immersion Program. ASIANetwork Exchange: A Journal for Asian Studies in the Liberal Arts, 27(2), pp.30鈥42. DOI:
  • 鈥淭he Sustainability and Evolution of Talempong: Pluralism in Minangkabau Gong Practices鈥 Performing Indonesia, ed. by Sumarsam and Andy McGraw. Smithsonian Institution. Freer Occasional Paper Series, New Series, vol. 5, 2016.
  • Gongs and Pop Songs: Sounding Minangkabau in Indonesia. Research in International Studies. Southeast Asia Series, No. 127. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press. 2015. 
  • 鈥淢inangkabau/ West Sumatra, Indonesia鈥 in The Ethnomusicologists鈥 Cookbook, Volume II : Complete Meals from Around the World, edited by Sean Williams, Taylor & Francis Group, 47-52, 2015.
  • 鈥淭he Art of Grieving: West Sumatra鈥檚 Worst Earthquake in Music Videos.鈥 Ethnomusicology Forum 22(2):129-159. 2013.
  • 鈥淧op Song as Custom: Weddings, Entrepreneurs, and Ethnicity in West Sumatra.鈥 Ethnomusicology 55(2):200-228. 2011.

Notes

Jennifer Fraser presents at Society for Ethnomusicology conference

On October 23, 2020, Jennifer Fraser presented a paper titled 鈥淭eaching as Scholarship or, How My Students Have Made Me a Better Ethnomusicologist,鈥 as part of a panel, 鈥淓thnomusicology as a Liberal Art: Pedagogy, Disciplinarity, and Institutionalization at the Educational Crossroads鈥 at the annual Society for Ethnomusicology conference. Fellow panelists included Jeffers Engelhardt at Amherst College, Morgan Luker at Reed College, and Whitney Slaten at Bard College. Several 91直播 alumni participated as part of the audience, including Alicia Lola Jones, faculty at Indiana University and Christian James, graduate student, at Indiana University. 

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漏 2026, 91直播